Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else

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I can see clear differences in the sky, buildings, grass, and the ground detail, the downgrade is real, also tessellation has completely gone, plus looks like in this color correction shadows have been added to the grass and other detail, i don't think it's just a color correction

That whatifgaming insider was spot-on, I guess.

I wonder if the devs will patch some of the options back in. I imagine some mid/high-end players would rather play at 30fps with ground/building tessellation than 60fps without. And there's no reason why ultra high powered PCs couldn't handle the removed options, even if they aren't terribly well optimized.
 
Nope, only tears :p

colour-correct ps4 looks better than the original e3.


does that mean we have to "colour-correct" the game to have that desired balance in colours, contrast and brightness? or is that just mainly applying a cool, blue-tint colour scheme vs. the seemingly warm colour palette? hmm..
 

Fbh

Gold Member
Here's a more easily viewable comparison between the color-corrected PS4 retail footage and the original E3 builds.

tLvb.png


wLvb.png

Well, the downgrade is clear but I have to say those comparison shots don't make it look as bad as other I've seen.
 
Wanna back that up? I'm all for agreeing with you if you provide some proof.

edit: I mean I'd concede that some people find Witcher 3 aesthetically more pleasing like Unreal below, but graphically it looks superior to the Witcher.

read through this thread, theres plenty of proof
 

fastmower

Member
From your own source:

Like I said, it's option A. Do you REALLY think CDPR would overpromise by THAT much?

Edit: Again, allegedly CDPR (the NeoGAF "source" in the article isn't really a great source) stated the game looks like this:
1uKMWfa.jpg


Yeah, no way they said that.

I'm just stating why people have that notion. I don't think it will look like that trailer at all.

edit: I should have expressed that a little better in my original post.
 

UnrealEck

Member
Is it me or did the promo gameplay feature volumetric clouds? And it doesnt look like the actual game does?

It also had better smoke. I think that used to be volumetric. The smoke coming from the chimneys used to look a lot fuller.

edit: I mean I'd concede that some people find Witcher 3 aesthetically more pleasing like Unreal below, but graphically it looks superior to the Witcher.

Not just aesthetically. I outlined why in my post.
 

Szeth

Member
That original E3 footage is the game I want to play. Look at those clouds!

The worst part is there's no reason the PC couldn't look like that other than parity :|
 

viveks86

Member
it's a good thing they removed that hideous gradient lens filter they got going around the edges.

The vignette? It's still there as an option. I personally don't like it either

Is it me or did the promo gameplay feature volumetric clouds? And it doesnt look like the actual game does?

Nope. Clouds were always semi volumetric.


You can see a similar sky here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rDCMcRqj1Xo#t=801

vlcsnap-2015-05-16-16h21m13s165.png

vlcsnap-2015-05-16-16h20m28s233.png
 
The worst part is there's no reason the PC couldn't look like that other than parity :|


how naive. cdpr is also a business. they're not going to make a game that will require only high-end to be played. in every game, there is always a base, minimum in which the game can be rendered and be at a playable state. look at their minimum requirements. even then, the game will run perfectly fine. which means the "actual" specs in which the witcher won't even render, is way below the high-end. they will be working within the confines of such "minimum" to add effects, postproc, maximize texture res, etc. anything above that minimum required hardware is being rendered by brute force and optimisations. parity? as far as i'm concerned, they've already cut a lot of potential customers on pc because of their requirements and that is the limit at which they are willing to give up. they can make the most technical game but they're not about to go suicidal like arma and just have the game be playable on high-end rigs.
 

DOWN

Banned
Not saying it doesn't. It's a great looking game with nice art. No doubt about that. I'm only in disagreement with the exaggerative praise the game often gets. I've seen people make truly rediculous comparisons with The Order's graphics.



One's full of blur and grain and a greyish-brown tonemap that runs in a letterboxed resolution with very linear environments and the other is a full-HD, colourful and expansive game with huge environments and draw distances featuring real reachable areas. (yes I'm exaggerating, they both have good points and bad.)
To be fair, there should at least be some context before even beginning to tackle the question.
If you need to try that hard to qualify graphics, you come off as trying to create biased rules for a race that are specifically tailored to let your pick succeed. The Order looks graphically brilliant, but I don't want to try and get into lots of posting on that since I'd worry about going far off topic even in this graphics thread. A vertical slice of W3 just isn't that advanced, and for obvious reasons, we shouldn't expect CDPR's next game to be at that level either.

CtJvuY7huayOI.gif

KZW73KBV5KC1G.gif
 
how naive. cdpr is also a business. they're not going to make a game that will require only high-end to be played. in every game, there is always a base, minimum in which the game can be rendered and be at a playable state. look at their minimum requirements. even then, the game will run perfectly fine. which means the "actual" specs in which the witcher won't even render, is way below the high-end. they will be working within the confines of such "minimum" to add effects, postproc, maximize texture res, etc. anything above that minimum required hardware is being rendered by brute force and optimisations. parity? as far as i'm concerned, they've already cut a lot of potential customers on pc because of their requirements and that is the limit at which they are willing to give up. they can make the most technical game but they're not about to go suicidal like arma and just have the game be playable on high-end rigs.

You can have optional options you know and not destroy your company. Tons of games do it. Crysis games, metro games, etc... are all examples of this.

Limiting the PC higher end options because of "low end" boxes or PCs does not make you necessarily more profitable.

The witcher 3 never ever used tesselation for micro detail like this caption states. That is just a different texture.
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account

Please tell me you didn't make another picture with red arrows and boxes everywhere pointing out flaws.


Jesus Christ.

Its a year old PC build vs a pre release PS4 build. Of course there will be differences.


The whole point is to show that it is not that dissimilar.
 

Zomba13

Member
Here's a more easily viewable comparison between the color-corrected PS4 retail footage and the original E3 builds.

tLvb.png

Nothing to do with comparisons but I've always wondered why devs add/remove certain geometry features in some places. Like that tree added in the final build that wasn't there in the 2013 one. Why was it added? I'm always interested in little things like that. Like is it as simple as a level designer thinking "Eh, looks a little empty there. Have a tree." or is it something they sit down and think "The player will enter from this direction the first time, we need it to look really cool but it's a bit plain. Add a tree. Or remove a tree so the view is better. Or add a tree infront of a light source so it casts a shadow and looks cool.".
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
I'm surprised nobody's making comparison shots of Kaer Moren in Witcher 1 vs Witcher 3. I think the swamps in TW1 and TW3 are also the same swamp, though maybe different areas of it. The oft posted 2013 swamp gif has what looks like a tower in the background, and people have speculated it's the same tower from TW1.
 

viveks86

Member
Please tell me you didn't make another picture with red arrows and boxes everywhere pointing out flaws.


Jesus Christ.

Its a year old PC build vs a pre release PS4 build. Of course there will be differences.


The whole point is to show that it is not that dissimilar.

Come on now. You gotta at least give him props for throwing in tessellation.
 
You can have optional options you know and not destroy your company. Tons of games do it. Crysis games, metro games, etc... are all examples of this.
.

not sure those are the best examples.

i'm happy for the metro devs though, inspite of their difficulties. and hey, they weren't publishing. cdpr is.
 

UnrealEck

Member
If you need to try that hard to qualify graphics, you come off as trying to create biased rules for a race that are specifically tailored to let your pick succeed. The Order looks graphically brilliant, but I don't want to try and get into lots of posting on that since I'd worry about going far off topic even in this graphics thread. A vertical slice of W3 just isn't that advanced, and for obvious reasons, we shouldn't expect CDPR's next game to be at that level either.

I didn't try hard at all. I expressed to you the reasons why I think people's views on The Order's graphics are exaggerated or why I disagree with them.
It's not rules at all. A game which has blur and grain filters over it along with a brownish-grey tonemap, letterboxed resolution and linear environments isn't going to impress me as much as if it were much more adventurous and ambitious with its expansiveness, more colourful and with a full-HD image with more colour.

I've seen The Order. I don't know what the gifs are for. Maybe you think I haven't seen it and so you're forcing me to see it. You'd have been better linking to a video, but I guess I wouldn't be forced to look at it then. Those gifs also just reinforce my point on linearity and the much more restrictive and confined nature of the game's environments and gameplay. Even gameplay gifs would have done the same, but these just show an in-game cutscene.

I've got no idea what you mean by the verticle slice of W3. To the comment regarding CD Projekt's next game (Cyberpunk I guess), as I said, it's a future title targetting future tech. We've not seen any actual in-game footage of it yet. We've not even seen the engine yet as far as I know.

Edit: I guess I should repeat this to be clear - "(yes I'm exaggerating, they both have good points and bad.)" I was exaggerating with the comparison. I guess perhaps poor humour. That part of my comment was in reply to someone else, not you. It was in regards to him comparing W3 to The Order. My point was that they're a lot different and that context should be brought. (I did this with exaggeration)
 
Here's a more easily viewable comparison between the color-corrected PS4 retail footage and the original E3 builds.

tLvb.png

If the bottom pic is PS4 then I don't see why the top one can't be pc with higher settings. Doesn't make any sense. It's bizarre that pc on ultra settings would have the same draw distance as the console versions.
 
If you need to try that hard to qualify graphics, you come off as trying to create biased rules for a race that are specifically tailored to let your pick succeed. The Order looks graphically brilliant, but I don't want to try and get into lots of posting on that since I'd worry about going far off topic even in this graphics thread. A vertical slice of W3 just isn't that advanced, and for obvious reasons, we shouldn't expect CDPR's next game to be at that level either.

CtJvuY7huayOI.gif

KZW73KBV5KC1G.gif

Can't you at least make WebM versions to illustrate your point?

I've got no idea what you mean by the verticle slice of W3. To the comment regarding CD Projekt's next game (Cyberpunk I guess), as I said, it's a future title targetting future tech. We've not seen any actual in-game footage of it yet. We've not even seen the engine yet as far as I know.

Are we expecting it to release in 2018? I don't really know why people are getting bogged down in discussing it now?
 

UnrealEck

Member
Are we expecting it to release in 2018? I don't really know why people are getting bogged down in discussing it now?

As far as I know there's not even an estimated date from CD Projekt. I guess the discussion regarding it was based around whether it'll look better than W3, which I guess is a fair assumption to make since it'll be based on future tech.
 
not sure those are the best examples.

i'm happy for the metro devs though, inspite of their difficulties. and hey, they weren't publishing. cdpr is.

I definitely do not think the reason crytek floundered was because they made their PC ultra settings really heavy and advanced.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
how naive. cdpr is also a business. they're not going to make a game that will require only high-end to be played. in every game, there is always a base, minimum in which the game can be rendered and be at a playable state. look at their minimum requirements. even then, the game will run perfectly fine. which means the "actual" specs in which the witcher won't even render, is way below the high-end. they will be working within the confines of such "minimum" to add effects, postproc, maximize texture res, etc. anything above that minimum required hardware is being rendered by brute force and optimisations. parity? as far as i'm concerned, they've already cut a lot of potential customers on pc because of their requirements and that is the limit at which they are willing to give up. they can make the most technical game but they're not about to go suicidal like arma and just have the game be playable on high-end rigs.

Lol, suicidal like Arma? You mean a series that has so far outsold the Witcher series?

There are three ArmA games (plus two expansion packs) and the first one predates The Witcher by a year.

Plus the only real reason ArmA runs like shit on a lot of PCs is because its CPU optimization is shit. Bohemia's engine doesn't really have multi-threading yet.
 

Coflash

Member
Lol, suicidal like Arma? You mean a series that has so far outsold the Witcher series?

I have 2 GTX980s in SLI, a 5930K and 16GB of DDR4 RAM and can barely achieve 35FPS on a populated map at times. Multiplayer? Forget it. It has been the same since the alpha and the 3 other PCs I had in between. Settings 1 | Settings 2 | Settings 3

This is the most upvoted ticket by the way: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=716

It doesn't bode well for their next game if things continue this way. Not that putting it on consoles would help, but their path does seem rather suicidal to me.
 

tuxfool

Banned
What happened here? That looks awful :eek:.

Man the more I come to this thread the more disappointed I leave. It seems the graphical quality of the game is as inconsistent as the wind in the Witcher world.

Inconsistent graphical quality in an open world game? Really, people say the weirdest things...
 

Vitor711

Member
Looking at these now, It looks like the top is using a HBAO+ and has higher draw distance.

That's my point - in general, the differences aren't huge.

As long as the HBAO actually works in the final PC build (there's rumours that it's broken as of right now, as it appears in the official Nvidia screenshots but not those taken by recent streamers) and we can indeed increase LOD beyond the base settings (if PS4 is the equivalent of 'high' settings as suggested, then we've got a notch or two higher than that already). Plus, TW2 had a bunch of things that you could improve upon by editing the .ini - LOD could be massively improved by that alone and I'm sure it's the same case here.

Fingers crossed anyway. I'd be very, very disappointed if that wasn't the case.
 
Good god how can people compare PS4 images to the old trailers and say "downgrade"

Of course the consoles can't look as good as the PC version, I will be VERY surprised if it doesn't look like the footage on the PC versions when completely maxed out and .ini tuned.

Some of you guys is crazy.

Lets wait until launch and see how the PC versions performs... I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of crow eaten.
wtzgU.gif
 
Good god how can people compare PS4 images to the old trailers and say "downgrade"

Of course the consoles can't look as good as the PC version, I will be VERY surprised if it doesn't look like the footage on the PC versions when completely maxed out and .ini tuned.

Some of you guys is crazy.

Lets wait until launch and see how the PC versions performs... I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of crow eaten.
wtzgU.gif

only by you
 

jett

D-Member
I find these mentions of The Order to be pointless. W3 is a massive open world game, and with its lush, gorgeous, colorful vistas it can be pretty in ways The Order can never be.
 
I think the real story of this thread the (IMO) awful color palette change they decided to do. Too much color, looks way too cartoony.

I actually think a lot of that change is how they author their textures. It seems like a lot of the stuff that they previously "baked" into the the diffuse texture has been removed in most instances (dark shadows and shading). Arguably better for a PBR pipeline, but only if the lighting, shadowing, and polycounts can do it justice.
 
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